Microsoft BLINK vs Nokia Cinemagraph [Video]

It’s a battle of the photo apps! This time we are looking at apps that make your photos come to life. BLINK and Cinemagraph are two photo apps that can turn regular photos into moving images. Although they accomplish the same general goal, these apps go about it very differently. Which app is better? Let’s find out!

BLINK

BLINK is made by Microsoft Research, and available on all Windows Phone 8 devices. It started life as an app to help you get that perfect shot by taking 20 consecutive photos in a matter of seconds. Afterwards you pick the best photo and save it. Recently Microsoft added the ability to make short animations by combining the photos.

Using the red sliders you select a range of photos to be animated. BLINK puts them into a slideshow that you can share, but it’s not an animated .gif. You can only share it by using the so.cl link provided. It’s quick, easy, and relatively simple to do. Here is the BLINK from the video.

Cinemagraph

Cinemagraph is much more powerful than BLINK. You get to select what part of the image you want to be animated. To do this you simply add or erase parts of the photo by drawing with your finger. Once you have it how you like you can share it with a link from Nokia. Unlike BLINK the photo can be saved as a .gif, which allows us to do things like post it below.

So which app is the best? Let me put it this way, if Cinemagraph was available on all devices it would be an easy pick. It has many more options, and you can do a lot of really cool stuff with it. Plus the ability to download the animations as .gifs makes it really easy to share. BLINK is great at being simple, but the photos can only be viewed in one place, and they can’t be embedded. If you have a Nokia phone Cinemagraph is the easy choice, otherwise BLINK is your only option. Do any of you use these apps?